Silenced weapons

[BetterThanLife]

As for the size of the can on a silenced weapon, The MP5 series is extremely effective. The MP5SD3 and later actually uses standard 9mm ammo and slows it down. The bolt sliding back and forth makes more noise than the round firing. The silencer on the Mark23 is also very effective. (Talk about messing with someone's mind. SIlencer, flash suppressor, IR laser and IR flashlight. In a totally dark building wearing night vision you can use the laser or light on the weapon to find your target, aim, shoot your target and nobody knows what happened unless they trip over the body or catch some splash. (Though the Mark 23 is a .45 and therefore subsonic and easier to silence.)

 

[BetterThanLife]

I have read about this stuff. Neat concept, very limited range though.You don't get nearly the muzzel velocity so accuracy and range go way down. (For a shot gun that is saying something.

The Armbrust works though, primarily because it is a rocket. the cartridge is only responsible for getting it out of the tube and safe ignition range, at least the way I understood the way it works. Using a counter weight principle, (It throws all sorts of plastic flakes out the back to eliminate recoil.

)

Originally posted by far-trader:
Just recalled this little gem too, the Teleshot for silent shotguns

 

[BetterThanLife]

For a silent projectile weapon, perhaps a fin stabilized (guided?) rocket round. (An advancement of the Gyrojet guns.) You have virtually no noise from launch, if it is subsonic no sonic boom, decent range, accurate everything you are looking for.

 

[kaladorn]

Originally posted by Corejob:
I'm not sure of the utility of such a weapon, since unless the ambush has very few people, they'll be too spread out for any such weapon to have much effect. Most people fail to realize that they typical shotgun pattern is less than a foot wide at 25 feet. Even cannister loads for the M203 aren't that effective, although soldiers perceive that they are. (if you were to believe television, someone armed with a shotgun, even if they had the eyesight and coordination of Mr. McGoo, could take out the entire front line of a pro football team.

Something like a full auto shotgun is another matter, however there is just no good solution to being caught in an ambush except to charge the source of fire and hope for the best.

Or to suppress the source of fire effectively and break contact.

The weapon I saw looked about the size of a rifle grenade and affixed to the end of the barrel of an AR. I'm not sure how effective it was, but someone obviously thought it was effective enough to manufacture.

 

[Todg]

Are you sure you aren't thinking about the Israeli door breaching round?

http://www.isayeret.com/gear/simon/simon.htm

Not sure how other forces train, but the US army trains it's troops, if caught in a ambush, to immediately assault the in the direction of fire. If you stand, or withdraw, you just increase your time in the kill zone. Studies from WWII throught Vietnam showed the most effective tactic is to close with and attack the ambusher.

It seem counterproductive, but it works. Charging your ambusher gets you out of the kill zone the fastest, and puts the ambusher on the defensive. If you break contact, you are in a kill zone until you get out of the effective range of the ambushers weapons. Also, by chraging your attacker, as soon as you reach his lines you deprive him of enfilading fire unless he wants to put his own people at risk.

Your ability to suppress the fire is going to be limited unless you know precisely where the ambusher is and you have superior fire power. By the time you call in support fire, most of your people will be dead (British studies in Malaysia indicate that most casualties in an ambush occur in the first few seconds. This is why you always initiate your ambush with the most casualty producing weapon.)

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by Morte:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> Surely there is some solution other than projectile weapons.

One would like to think so. But I'm struggling.
</font>[/QUOTE]The problem is 'instant death'. Contrary to popular fiction, instant death isn't all that instant. A shot to the hind brain is probably as fast as it gets. Even poisons and toxin have to have time to take effect. Death from toxins can take minutes. Even cyanide and berve agent take time.

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by Bhoins:
As for the size of the can on a silenced weapon, The MP5 series is extremely effective. The MP5SD3 and later actually uses standard 9mm ammo and slows it down. The bolt sliding back and forth makes more noise than the round firing. The silencer on the Mark23 is also very effective. (Talk about messing with someone's mind. SIlencer, flash suppressor, IR laser and IR flashlight. In a totally dark building wearing night vision you can use the laser or light on the weapon to find your target, aim, shoot your target and nobody knows what happened unless they trip over the body or catch some splash. (Though the Mark 23 is a .45 and therefore subsonic and easier to silence.)

Neither the MP-5SD nor the Mark 23 with suppressor is totally silent. Nor does the suppressor on the SD 'slow the projectile down'. The only way to reduce velocity on a supersonic projectile is to use a ported barrel, which taps off some of the propellant gasses bear the chamber so that the bullet never reaches supersonic velocity.

Ballistic crack is only one portion of the sound generated, but it is a factor that a suppressor can't do anything about. Other components of gun noise are precursor wave (caused by air in from of the bullet being compressed), muzzle blast from the expanding propellant gasses and turbulant gass flow (found only in suppressors).

The solution to making the MP-5 and other, unported guns subsonic is to use special sunsonic ammunition, for example the 9mm with 147gn bullets (virtually all 147gn ammunition is subsonic)

All other things being equal, the larger the suppressor compared to the barrel volume, the better the suppressor. GemTech, AWC and other companies make very small suppressors, but these are not 'silent' by any stretch. Instead, they are desined to reduce the report below the threshhoold of hearing damage so that SpecOps or Swat teams can operate without hearing protection for better command and control without risking hearing damage.

In terms of total sound reduction, the WWII DeLisle still rates towards the top, due primarily to the huge volume of the suppressor. There's nothing mysterious about it. A suppressor is just like a car muffler. The more internal volume, the better it works.

What is most surprising is that despite all the supposed technology in new suppressors, testing has revealed that some of the best suppressors ever made were the turn of the century Maxim suppressors.

My own experiments building suppressors (see http://www.guntech.com) indicate that in order to totally suppress the .458 SOCOM requires a suppressor 2 inches in diameter and almost 18 inches long. With a suppressor this size, a person in the next room was unable to detect the firing. Those tiny suppressors made by GemTech and AWC only reduce muzzle noise by 20-30dB. Since a gunshot (unmuffled) can be as loud as 160 db, that still leaves a very noticeable sound signature.

In the land of suppressors, bigger is better.

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by Bhoins:
For a silent projectile weapon, perhaps a fin stabilized (guided?) rocket round. (An advancement of the Gyrojet guns.) You have virtually no noise from launch, if it is subsonic no sonic boom, decent range, accurate everything you are looking for.

Except that GyroJet type weapons have proved to be terrible. No velocity (and hence no lethality) at short range, and terrible accuracy at long range. There's a reason that the GyroJet was never a commercial success, though it has long been a favorite of the SciFi crowd.

And they aren't quiet.

Fin stabilized projectiles take a while to stabilize, whereas rifles projectiles are basically stable at the muzzle (this is a gross oversimplifications, but I don't think anyone is interested in a lengthly discussion of the behavior of spin stabilized projectiles. If you are, I recommend reading "Modern Exterior Ballistics: The Launch and Flight Dynamic of Symmetrical Projectiles" by Robert McCoy. It has enough detail for even the most fanatical math afficianado.)

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by Bhoins:
I have read about this stuff. Neat concept, very limited range though.You don't get nearly the muzzel velocity so accuracy and range go way down. (For a shot gun that is saying something.

The Armbrust works though, primarily because it is a rocket. the cartridge is only responsible for getting it out of the tube and safe ignition range, at least the way I understood the way it works. Using a counter weight principle, (It throws all sorts of plastic flakes out the back to eliminate recoil.

)

Actually, the Armbrust is not a rocket. It's a Davis gun (a form of recoilless rifle). It fires the warhead out one end, and a comparable mass of compressed plastic flakes out the other, cancelling recoil.

Like the Teleshot, the propellant gasses are trapped inside the ammunition, in this case by two moving pistons that are captured at either end of the tube of the launcher so there is no smoke or flash and the report is described as about equal to a .22 caliber pistol.

Other Armbrust data.

Penetration: 300mm cold rolled homogenous plate steel at zero degrees. Max range is 1500 meters, with an operating range against vehicles of 300 meters. It requires less than 1 meter clearance behind the weapon.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the Welrod silenced pistol.

http://www.timelapse.dk/Welrod/uk/index.htm

(there's even a .wav of it being fired in there)

 

[Todg]

Or its precusor, the sleeve gun.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwtwo/soe_gallery_10.shtml

The best silenced weapons are not merely conventional weapons with a suppressor strapped on. Rather, they are purpose built tools.

Morte didn't specify whether or not the weapon neds to be concealable, and what the base TL is, but I'll describe a silenced rifle I've wanted to build for a long time.

The rifle is chambered for the .458 SOCOM cartridge. This is a large catridge derived from the .50 AE and is capable of firing a 500 or 600 gn VLD (Very Low Drag) bullet subsonically out beyond the required 200 meter range. At 200 meters the .458 SOCOM cann still deliver 1500J of energy from a subsonic projectile (about the same as an assault rifle at the muzzle)

The weapon is a bullput layout, with a large diameter suppressor uncircling the entire barrel. While the weapon has an overall length about equal t a conventional rifle, its suppressor is over 50cm long and 5cm in diameter.

The weapon is bottom fed and bottom ejection. The spent rounds are ejected into a a fabric cartridge collector of nomex and closed cell foam. This serves to muffle mechanical noise and collect brass. The receiver group is also covered with a sandwitch of heat proof foam that acts as both cheek rest and sound damper.

Even firing pin strike is eliminated by using a version of the Etronix electronic firing system. The weapon is futted with a simple sight having stadia lines to indicate catridge drop off at various ranges.

The optimal shot is the head shot, although the rifle uses a frangible projectile (a la MagSafe of Glaser) to insure maximum lethality. If penetration is required, a phosphor bronze pointed projectil can be substituted.

http://www.teppojutsu.com/458.htm

http://www.remington.com/ammo/centerfire/etronx.htm

 

[DaveChase]

A friend of mine who is a machinist by trade and his father is also a machinist & weapon smith made a custom .22 cal rifle barrel with a built in noise suppresor.

We when out shooting rabbits and he did not tell me that he was using the custom .22, it looked like a heavy barrel .22 targeting rifle.

All he said before he took the shot was 'Stand beside me and watch this shot.

I heard the hammer fall and the bullet sliding down barrel with a puft sound as it left the rifle. Then the rabbit fell over.

Suprise me more than the rabbit (since it died .

Later we set up shooting bar with a mic taped on the back side to record the sounds of the shots.

We announce each shot (verbally) alternated between the custom .22, my .22 lever action and .270. At 50+ feet you never heard anything from the custom rifle except the can being hit by the bullet.

Now I am not sure if you could do the same with a bigger cal or not but I am sure glad that the guy and his dad are still friends

Dave

 

[Morte]

Originally posted by Corejob:
The best silenced weapons are not merely conventional weapons with a suppressor strapped on. Rather, they are purpose built tools.

Morte didn't specify whether or not the weapon neds to be concealable, and what the base TL is,

I suppose I'm mostly thinking of TL 8 up to 9 or so, since after that it's pretty much into handwave territory ("it works like a gauss rifle except...").

I was looking for was a purpose built design.

I specified a range of 200m+, and desired an instant/silent drop (i.e. headshots preferred), so I assumed that to mean a "long gun". I figure nobody is going to aim a pistol accurately at that range.

I should also have clarified that I was thinking more in terms of espionage and special forces than regular military snipers. RPG rather than wargame.

In own my mind I started out thinking of an improved DeLisle carbine, built around a big/slow bullet and a huge suppressor. You can see my first post is heading that way. But I wondered if there might be more radical technological opportunies. It turned out that there could be, i.e. supersonic projectiles with no sonic boom and the captive propellant systems.

So I started from the DeLisle and thought about what might be worth changing. I came up with:

- Make it semi-automatic instead of bolt action (it's a nice bonus). Use a lockable breach for extra quieting on special occasions, manually cycling the action later. I threw in a full auto mode for when things go horribly wrong and you want an AR/SMG.

- Caseless propellant to save dealing with spent cartridges issue. [If the captive propellant systems are practical for this application, the case is welcome back.]

- Modern/futuristic sighting.

- Might want to be bullpup if the suppressor ends up as big as I suspect it will.

- Electronic firing to bring the noise down, if we can get to the point where the firing pin is the noisiest bit.

- Ammo designed for the job. I was thinking on the same principles as your SOCOM round, but not in that detail.

- Ignore current rules of war, so far as expanding bullets and so on are concerned. This is for an SF RPG, not the US Army.

but I'll describe a silenced rifle I've wanted to build for a long time.

It looks pretty damn good to me.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Corejob:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bhoins:
[

Neither the MP-5SD nor the Mark 23 with suppressor is totally silent. Nor does the suppressor on the SD 'slow the projectile down'. The only way to reduce velocity on a supersonic projectile is to use a ported barrel, which taps off some of the propellant gasses bear the chamber so that the bullet never reaches supersonic velocity.

Ballistic crack is only one portion of the sound generated, but it is a factor that a suppressor can't do anything about. Other components of gun noise are precursor wave (caused by air in from of the bullet being compressed), muzzle blast from the expanding propellant gasses and turbulant gass flow (found only in suppressors).

The solution to making the MP-5 and other, unported guns subsonic is to use special sunsonic ammunition, for example the 9mm with 147gn bullets (virtually all 147gn ammunition is subsonic)

All other things being equal, the larger the suppressor compared to the barrel volume, the better the suppressor. GemTech, AWC and other companies make very small suppressors, but these are not 'silent' by any stretch. Instead, they are desined to reduce the report below the threshhoold of hearing damage so that SpecOps or Swat teams can operate without hearing protection for better command and control without risking hearing damage.

In terms of total sound reduction, the WWII DeLisle still rates towards the top, due primarily to the huge volume of the suppressor. There's nothing mysterious about it. A suppressor is just like a car muffler. The more internal volume, the better it works.

What is most surprising is that despite all the supposed technology in new suppressors, testing has revealed that some of the best suppressors ever made were the turn of the century Maxim suppressors.

My own experiments building suppressors (see http://www.guntech.com) indicate that in order to totally suppress the .458 SOCOM requires a suppressor 2 inches in diameter and almost 18 inches long. With a suppressor this size, a person in the next room was unable to detect the firing. Those tiny suppressors made by GemTech and AWC only reduce muzzle noise by 20-30dB. Since a gunshot (unmuffled) can be as loud as 160 db, that still leaves a very noticeable sound signature.

In the land of suppressors, bigger is better. [/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]Actually the newer MP5SD series do reduce the velocity of the round removing gas before the bullet gets to supersonic speed. I thought that started with the SD3 model but it may have started with the SD5. While I haven't heard the MK23 only reports of it, I have heard the MP5. It isn't quite as good as Hollywood suppersors but you would be hard pressed to hear it at much more than 10M or in the next room. (Since the primary use is Counter Terrorism and SOF use, indoors is the typical place it is used.

) Used on a City Street or in a Urban environment, you will never notice it. (Unless it is a MOUT site and there is no city background noise.)

 

[far-trader]

Oh my! My ciminal mind (always kept well in check except when gaming or daydreaming ) just had a thought. Back to the topic of captive propellant rounds I see them (if well designed) being a real pain for forensics. No GSR on the perp to prove they fired a weapon and no GSR pattern on the vic to help determine how close they were shot at. There may be even more benefits than the obvious silence of the weapon for the criminal, like the above lack of GSR.

 

[BetterThanLife]

True, true. Use an Ice bullet for even more fun. (Though I think that is more along the lines of Hollyweird again.) Then you have no balistics either. Though with Teleshot or any shotgun you leave very little behind in terms of ballistics. (No rifling and the pellets tend to seriously deform on impact.) Now with an Armbrust you have to deal with all those plastic flakes you left behind.

Originally posted by far-trader:
Oh my! My ciminal mind (always kept well in check except when gaming or daydreaming ) just had a thought. Back to the topic of captive propellant rounds I see them (if well designed) being a real pain for forensics. No GSR on the perp to prove they fired a weapon and no GSR pattern on the vic to help determine how close they were shot at. There may be even more benefits than the obvious silence of the weapon for the criminal, like the above lack of GSR.

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by Bhoins:
True, true. Use an Ice bullet for even more fun. (Though I think that is more along the lines of Hollyweird again.) Then you have no balistics either. Though with Teleshot or any shotgun you leave very little behind in terms of ballistics. (No rifling and the pellets tend to seriously deform on impact.) Now with an Armbrust you have to deal with all those plastic flakes you left behind.

I think the ice bullet has been pretty well put to rest previously. You might be able to fire an ice bullet from an airgun, but the cross sectional desnity would be such that it would lose velocity very quickly.

In the case of the Armbrust, foresics would have it's hands full finding and identifying the body. This is an anti-tank round we are discussing after all. As for the plastic flakes, you never touched them. The only obly physical evidence to be found would lead back to the person who packed the weapon during manufacture.

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by DaveChase:
A friend of mine who is a machinist by trade and his father is also a machinist & weapon smith made a custom .22 cal rifle barrel with a built in noise suppresor.

Just make sure you realize that you Friend's dad, unless he has filed an ATF form 4 and paid the $200 tax (or is a licensed title II manufacturer), is committing a class A Federal felony punishable by ten years in prison and $100,000 dollar fine.

In many states, you can own these goodies legally. It is not worth going to prison to do it illegally, IMHO.

 

[Shadow Bear]

How about a low tech weapon made with a high tech approach. A crossbow is fairly silent, has no recoil, has no flash and can send a round a fair way down range. With high tech sights and high tech head it could be the soultion you want.

Bolt heads could be ceramic, tranq, chemical or impact penetration. Wood shafts and ceramic heads would be hard to track back to the source

Also consider air guns of a large caliber. Again using high tech solutions for sights, payload and fire rates. Again no flash and little recoil.

While these weapons may have little effect against battledress they could defeat most other armor. Then again soem sort of acid/poison round may be able to eat through battledress given a little time.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Well I did say that Ice Bullets were Hollyweird. The best non-forensicable bullet is the shotgun, the next best is the Glaser Safety Slug. (Especially the original version. with the teflon.) Neither leave much evidence to determine what weapon was fired and both make a mess of the target.

As for the Armbrust, Not all your targets are going to be obliging enough to stand out there without body armor. SOme may not even go out in the open. Makes for a wonderful weapon to take someone out in an armored limo or behind a bulletproof window. Since it is fairly silent and has a dangerous backblast area of less than 0.5m if makes for a great weapon in those circumstances. Of course since it is one shot disposable and expensive, (Probably why the US didn't adopt it.) make sure you use it for the right target. (And it is fairly large so difficult to conceal or carry several of them. (So don't miss.)

Of course in most of those cases a Barrett Light .50 is the right tool for the job. You might not be able to silence it but since the bullet travels so fast the bullet hits before anyone can hear it and you can fire from so far away that shooting back would be difficult at best. Light Armor wouldn't even slow it down much. If you want a demonstration of what a .50 can do do this, walk out on the street, any street any town in the world. Look around you. Now realize that unless there is a Tank on your block nothing there stops a .50 round. (Some of us live in strange neighborhoods.

) Since you can take a man sized target at over 2000m with one hit you don't really need it to be silent. Matter of fact it delivers enough energy to knock down a Brown Bear at 2000M. (Probably enough to change its direction of travel between 1000m and 1500m.) Imagine what a .50 Glaser would do. YIKES!

Originally posted by Corejob:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bhoins:
True, true. Use an Ice bullet for even more fun. (Though I think that is more along the lines of Hollyweird again.) Then you have no balistics either. Though with Teleshot or any shotgun you leave very little behind in terms of ballistics. (No rifling and the pellets tend to seriously deform on impact.) Now with an Armbrust you have to deal with all those plastic flakes you left behind.

I think the ice bullet has been pretty well put to rest previously. You might be able to fire an ice bullet from an airgun, but the cross sectional desnity would be such that it would lose velocity very quickly.

In the case of the Armbrust, foresics would have it's hands full finding and identifying the body. This is an anti-tank round we are discussing after all. As for the plastic flakes, you never touched them. The only obly physical evidence to be found would lead back to the person who packed the weapon during manufacture.

</font>[/QUOTE]